Friday, December 11, 2009

Star Trek (2009)

We watched Star Trek last night. It came out in May of this year and is the back-story of the "Starship Enterprise" crew. It was entertaining: a good mix of pop-style philosophy, space saga music, funny bad guys (they looked a lot like the bad guys in the new Star Wars movies), and relatively interesting character development.

I think I've seen either two or three of the old Star Trek movies, so I knew at least the basics of Captain Kirk and Spock but was unclear on many of the subtleties and relationship details between the various crew members.

The movie was directed by J.J. Abrams, who is the co-creator of Lost.

The most interesting philosophical issue that the movies examines is time travel and interacting with the future. The links between the past, present and future were kind of hard to follow (but I guess they would be!), but there were cool scenes where Kirk talked with "future" Spock and then where Spock talked to his own future self.

384. What is the most famous book that deals with time travel? I guess the most famous movie is Back to the Future, but what about books? Are there any "high-culture" novels that deal with the issue?

385. Are there any inventors who actually work on time traveling machines? Or is it really pure science fiction?

386. Another future-tech thing that happens in Star Trek is teleportation. Is there a chance that could actually happen in the next couple hundred years? It's hard to imagine, but imagining the distant future -- as a general prospect -- is difficult.

387. Did hard core "Trekkies" like the new movie?

Star Trek is the #10 grossing movie of 2009 (so far). The top 5:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Ice Age 3

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2012

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Very interesting that four of the top five are sequels -- I guess that's why the studios keep making them.